Kamla: Govt stalling procurement law

Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar. PHOTO BY RATTAN JADOO.

Were it not for the Opposition and others, the Ministry of Finance and Finance Minister Colm Imbert would have tainted the process for appointing the procurement regulator and the members of the board of the Office of Procurement Regulation.

This from Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar as she made her contribution to the budget debate in the Lower House yesterday.

Persad-Bissessar said she wrote a letter to President Anthony Carmona and warned that the minister and ministry involvement in the process for the appointments was illegal and would result in the entire process being corrupted.

This was done so as not to allow Government to pervert the appointment process and influence the decision of who was appointed to this most important post.

She said it was “conspicuously noticeable” that, in his statement, the minister made no mention of his involvement and his ministry’s in the appointment process which had restarted. She questioned whether the minister’s actions were deliberate.

On the non-implementation of the procurement legislation, she said, over the past two years, Government had spent in excess of $110 billion and in fiscal 2018 proposed to spend over $50 billion.

She claimed it was Government’s intention to stall the procurement legislation to deliver on promises made to their friends and financiers and not the entire citizenry.